1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and a system for visualizing a body volume, in particular two- or three-dimensionally, and in particular a body volume of a human being or animal, as well as to a computer program product comprising software code portions for implementing the method in accordance with the invention.
In medical diagnostics, therapy and surgery, precise two- or three-dimensional representations of body volumes are necessary. To capture data representing the body volumes, diverse non-invasive methods of diagnosis, for example computer tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), are available. The captured data are usually digitized and subjected to image processing on a computer to visualize them. The processed image data can then be displayed two- or three-dimensionally on a monitor screen, where the image may also be rotated in three-dimensional space.
Each of the known methods of diagnosis is tailored to displaying a specific kind of tissue. For example, bone structures can be resolved particularly well by computer tomography, vascular structures can be resolved particularly well by CT angiograph methodology, and hydrogenous tissue can be resolved particularly well by MRI. Thus, only a specific kind of tissue can be resolved particularly well in a two- or three-dimensional visualization of a data set captured by means of a method of diagnosis.
However, the human body consists of various kinds of tissue. Thus, for an in-depth diagnosis two- or three-dimensional visualizations captured by various methods of diagnosis must be compared with each other visually, which is laborious and results in inaccuracies in diagnosis.
2. Description of the Related Art
U.S. Pat. No. 5,335,173 discloses an image display method for medical diagnosis, in which two different data sets, captured by different methods of diagnosis and offering a particularly good resolution of a bone structure and a skin structure respectively, are displayed three-dimensionally. For improved diagnosis, a specific portion can be selected on a monitor screen displaying slice images through a three-dimensional body volume. In the selected portion of the image, the data set which represents bone structures particularly well is replaced by the data set which represents skin structures particularly well, or vice-versa. Thus, in the selected image portion, preselected image data are replaced by the corresponding data of another data set. Even exchanging image information fails to increase the accuracy and information content of the diagnosis substantially.